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Literature for Life: A Thematic Introduction to Reading and Writing as both its title and content suggests, forges a close relationship between students’ reading and life experiences–the texts used are accessible, grounded, relatable, and meaningful. There’s enough range to suit instructors of many backgrounds, experiences, and strengths and to encourage instructors to better teaching and students to better learning. Literature for Life is organized around seven enduring themes: Families, Love, Life’s Journeys, Individual and Society, Personal Identity, Nature and the Environment, and War and Peace. Each theme is divided into clusters that provide instructors with useful teaching units.

X. J. Kennedy, after graduation from Seton Hall and Columbia, became a journalist second class in the Navy (“Actually, I was pretty eighth class”). His poems, some published in the New Yorker, were first collected in Nude Descending a Staircase (1961). Since then he has written six more collections, several widely adopted literature and writing textbooks, and seventeen books for children, including two novels. He has taught at Michigan, North Carolina (Greensboro), California (Irvine), Wellesley, Tufts, and Leeds. Cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and reprinted in some 200 anthologies, his verse has brought him a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lamont Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Aiken-Taylor prize, the Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, and the Award for Poetry for Children from the National Council of Teachers of English. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Dorothy have collaborated on four books and five children.

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and critic. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and three collections of criticism, most notably Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. A best-selling literary anthologist, Gioia has edited or co-edited over two dozen collections of poetry, fiction, and drama. He has also written two opera libretti and has collaborated with composers in genres ranging from classical to jazz and rock. For six years (2003-2009) he served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts where he gained strong bipartisan support for the previously imperiled agency and helped launch the largest literary programs in federal history, including The Big Read, Poetry Out Loud, and Shakespeare in American Communities. He was twice unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. For two years he directed the arts and culture programs for the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. and Colorado. He is currently the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.

Nina Revoyr is the author of four novels, The Necessary Hunger, Southland, and The Age of Dreaming. Southland was a Book Sense 76 pick, won the Lambda Literary Award, and was a Los Angeles Times "Best Book" of 2003. The Age of Dreaming was a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles.

Short Table of Contents

READING AND THINKING ABOUT LITERATURE

1. LITERATURE AND LIFE2. READING A STORY3. READING A POEM4. READING A PLAY5. READING AN ESSAY

WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

6. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE7. WRITING ABOUT A STORY8. WRITING ABOUT A POEM9. WRITING ABOUT A PLAY10. WRITING ABOUT AN ESSAY11. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPERREFERENCE GUIDE FOR MLA CITATIONS

THEMES OF LITERATURE, THEMES OF LIFE

12. FAMILIES13. LOVE14. LIFE’S JOURNEY15. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY16. PERSONAL IDENTITY17. NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT18. WAR AND PEACE

19, CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS

Detailed Table of Contents

1. LITERATURE AND LIFE

Why Are You In this Course?Why Study Literature and Writing?Getting a Job• Career Growth• Reading and Writing Are Critical SkillsFifty Famous English Majors• You May Have Several Careers• Are You Prepared?Literature for LifeKenneth McClane, “Sonny’s Blues” Saved My Life• The Value of Literature• By Way of an EndingCharles Bukowski, DostoevskyEmily Dickinson, There is no Frigate like a Book

2. READING A STORYThe Art of FictionTypes of Short FictionElements of Fiction• Plot• Point of View• Character• Setting• Tone and Style• Symbol• ThemeJohn Updike A & PEdgar Allan Poe The Tell-Tale HeartKatherine Mansfield Miss BrillCHECKLISTS: Analyzing a Story

FAMILY LEGACIESRobert Hayden The WhippingTed Kooser A Room in the PastSeamus Heaney DiggingJulia Alvarez By AccidentLi-Young Lee The GiftDiane Thiel The Minefield

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Family Legacies

POET IN DEPTH: FAMILY BONDS A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY GWENDOLYN BROOKSGwendolyn Brooks Sadie and MaudGwendolyn Brooks the motherGwendolyn Brooks the rites for Cousin VitGwendolyn Brooks The Bean EatersGwendolyn Brooks Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress-Toward

FAMILY DRAMASophocles Oedipus the King (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)

CRITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOK SOPHOCLES’S OEDIPUS THE KING

Historical and Cultural ContextsEllen Meese Background for Reading Oedipus the King1. THE ORIGINS OF GREEK THEATER2. THE CIVIC ROLE OF GREEK DRAMA3. TRAGEDY AND THE TRAGIC HERO4. THE ORIGINS OF OEDIPUS THE KING5. THE OEDIPUS LEGEND

WRITER IN DEPTH: TROUBLED MARRIAGESA COLLECTION OF STORIES BY KATE CHOPINKate Chopin The Story of an HourKate Chopin The StormKate Chopin Désirée’s Baby

Suggestions for Writing: Chopin’s Stories About Troubled Marriages

POETRY

LOVE POEMSAnne Bradstreet To My Dear and Loving HusbandElizabeth Barrett Browning How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways William Butler Yeats When You Are OldE. E. Cummings somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyondRafael Campo For J. W.Wislawa Szymborska True LoveWendy Cope Lonely Hearts

Suggestions for Writing: Love Poems

LOVE, SEX, AND DESIRE Andrew Marvell To His Coy MistressJohn Donne The FleaEdna St. Vincent Millay What lips my lips have kissedSharon Olds Sex Without LoveMarilyn Nelson The Ballad of Aunt GenevaKim Addonizio First Poem for You

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Love, Sex, and Desire

POET IN DEPTH: LOVE AND LOVE’S ILLUSIONSA COLLECTION OF SONNETS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREWilliam Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?William Shakespeare When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyesWilliam Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true mindsWilliam Shakespeare My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sunWilliam Shakespeare When my love swears that she is made of truth

DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERSNathanial Hawthorne Young Goodman BrownFlannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard to FindJoyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Suggestions for Writing: Stories About Dangerous Encounters

CULTURAL CONTEXTS CASEBOOKJOYCE CAROL OATES’S “WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

Fact Into FictionDon Moser The Pied Piper of Tucson: He Cruised in a Golden Car, Looking for Action

Fiction Into FilmJoyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Smooth Talk: Short Story into FilmBrenda O. Daly An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the MoviesRebecca Sumner Smoothing Out the Rough Spots: The Film Adaptation of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?B. Ruby Rich Good Girls, Bad Girls: Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk

Images: “Where Are You Going?” and MediaLife Magazine SpreadScenes from Smooth Talk

Suggestions for Writing: ”Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” in Context

FACING DEATHDylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good nightJohn Keats When I have fears that I may cease to beW. S. Merwin For the Anniversary of My DeathJosé Emilio Pacheco La Ceniza / AshesE. E. Cummings Buffalo Bill ’sSylvia Plath Lady Lazarus

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Facing Death

FAITH, DOUBT, AND MORTALITYJohn Donne Death be not proudChristina Rossetti UphillThomas Hardy HapEmily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death Kevin Young Late BluesGary Soto Heaven

Suggestions for Writing: Poems About Faith, Doubt, and Mortality

POET IN DEPTH: LIFE AND ITS CROSSROADSA COLLECTION OF POEMS BY ROBERT FROSTRobert Frost The Road Not TakenRobert Frost Acquainted with the NightRobert Frost Fire and IceRobert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningRobert Frost Desert Places

Suggestions for Writing: Robert Frost’s Poetry

ESSAYS

TURNING POINTS

James Baldwin Notes of a Native SonGeorge Orwell Shooting an ElephantSacha Z. Scoblic Rock Star, Meet TeetotalerSteve Martin DisneylandElisabeth Kübler-Ross On the Fear of Death

LONELINESS AND COMMUNITYWilliam Carlos Williams Danse RusseE. E. Cummings anyone lived in a pretty how townStevie Smith Not Waving but DrowningAllen Ginsberg A Supermarket in CaliforniaAnne Sexton Her KindPablo Neruda Muchos Somos / We Are Many

POET IN DEPTH: SELECTING YOUR OWN SOCIETYA COLLECTION OF POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSONEmily Dickinson I’m Nobody! Who are you?Emily Dickinson The Soul selects her own SocietyEmily Dickinson This is my letter to the WorldEmily Dickinson Much Madness is divinest SenseEmily Dickinson Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

ANIMALS AS ALLEGORY: THREE ANIMAL FABLES Aesop The Grasshopper and the AntBidpai The Camel and His FriendsChuang Tzu Independence

Suggestions for Writing: Animal Fables

POETRY

NATUREWilliam Blake To see a world in a grain of sandWalt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d AstronomerWilliam Butler Yeats The Lake Isle of InnisfreeH. D. StormRobinson Jeffers Carmel PointElizabeth Bishop The FishDana Gioia California Hills in AugustBenjamin Alire Sáenz To the Desert

PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICEWilliam Blake A Poison TreeEmma Lazarus The New Colossus Claude McKay If We Must DieWilliam Stafford At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian BorderE. E. Cummings i sing of Olaf glad and bigLinda Pastan EthicsDenise Levertov Making Peace